Early Biliteracy Development: Exploring Young Learners' Use of Their Linguistic Resources

A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this book provides both findings from empirical research with young bilinguals in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings. Each chapter is structured in a similar format to offer parallel descriptions of the research, including a brief review of related empirical studies, an overview of the methods for data collection and analysis, a description of the main findings, and specific pedagogical implications to support educators' efforts to construct meaningful, challenging, and dynamic literacy and language learning communities where one or more languages are used for communicating and learning. Pushing the field forward, this book is a valuable resource for helping literacy educators understand and respond to critical issues related to the development of young children's literate competencies in two languages in home and school contexts. This book begins with an introduction by Mileidis Gort and Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer and contains three parts. Part I, Emergence of Biliteracy: The Preschool Years, contains: (2) Supporting the Early Development of Biliteracy: The Role of Parents and Caregivers (Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer and Dumisile Mkhize); (3) Literacy Practices and Language Use among Latino Emergent Bilingual Children in Preschool Contexts (Lucinda Soltero-Gonzalez and Iliana Reyes); and (4) Learning How to Write in English and Chinese: Young Bilingual Kindergarten and First Grade Children Explore the Similarities and Differences between Writing Systems (David Yaden, Jr. and Tina Tsai). Part II, Biliteracy Development in Early Elementary School, contains: (5) Evaluation and Revision Processes of Young Bilinguals in a Dual Language Program (Mileidis Gort); (6) Zehra's Story: Becoming Biliterate in Turkish and English (Zeynep Camlibel and Georgia Garcia); (7) Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Framing Biliteracy from Students' Writings (Maria Franquiz); (8) The Evolution of Biliterate Writing Development through Simultaneous Bilingual Literacy Instruction (Wendy Sparrow, Sandra Butvilofsky and Kathy Escamilla). Part III, Reflections and Future Directions, contains: (9) Reflections and Directions for Biliteracy Research (Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer and Mileidis Gort). A glossary is also included.